To Peyton Manning, the weeks long courtship between him and several NFL teams seems like ancient history.

But twice now in the months since, coaches in San Francisco have denied having interest in Manning beyond an “evaluation.” And with the 49ers coming here to Denver for a preseason game on Sunday, all this is once again news.

“Yeah, we had a chance to talk football and talk about families. I mean, it really was an evaluation. When you look at free agency, on every player that’s a free agent, you need to write a report on them. So how do you write that report on Peyton Manning as a free agent? How do you write it? You don’t. It’s such a unique situation. You have to see where’s he’s at. You have to see where he’s at physically. Where his mind is at. What exactly does he represent at this point, et cetera. So, I just think the uniqueness of the situation, you can’t write a free-agent report on a player in that situation unless you actually get hands on and see how he’s doing. See where he’s at. So that’s pretty much what it was, really, just an evaluation.”

Roman continued:

“I understand how things are going to get blown up. It was good to talk football with him, but it really was just an evaluation. Where is this guy at? Can he even play? Where he’s at, physically, mentally — all that good stuff. So that’s it.”

So today I asked Manning if that’s all it was, just an evaluation?

“I can’t speak for them. It’s pretty well documented how all of that went down in the offseason. I’m not really going down memory lane,” Manning said.

Manning might not want to recap it all, so I will.

Manning visited with the Broncos, Cardinals, Titans, Dolphins and 49ers, including workouts and physicals with Denver, Tennessee and San Francisco. He told The Denver Post his favorite part of the process was meeting coaches and front office personnel from other teams that he only previously knew from afar.

Back in March, Manning was very up front with reporters about the free agent process, and told The Denver Post that he made calls to the coaches from the other teams (Tennessee, San Francisco and Arizona among them) to say he had picked Denver.

Manning said at the time:

“I got to be careful because I say something about Denver, and people can interpret it as something bad about the others. I’m telling, all of these places were great. There was no one thing any of these places did that made me not want to go there, and that’s what made it so hard. All of them made me seem very comfortable that I could picture playing there.”

He continued:

“I’ve gotten to know some good people. Munchack’s a stud, I enjoyed getting to know Harbaugh – something about the ex-players I bond to those kind of guys. They were all great, I just had to pick one. I had to pick a place, and I knew a lot of things felt right about Denver. And now it is up to me to go and make it the right decision.”